WEARVR’s Most Popular Christmas VR Games & Apps

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that WEARVR sees a huge spike in website traffic on Christmas Day each year. This year was particularly epic, though, and we thought you might enjoy a few insights into just how the VR landscape is looking from our internal perspective.

Virtual Reality Christmas Presents in 2017

Using the previous year as a benchmark, there’s a clear indication of a couple of different changes in the virtual reality market.

On Christmas Day 2016 WEARVR we saw a massive 670% rise in downloads of VR games and apps, and this was very much an organic increase without a huge amount in the way of advertising campaign support. It remained our biggest and best day for the remainder of 2017 by a long margin.

But in comparison, 2017’s Christmas Day jump was in the region of a 920% downloads increase. Again, our marketing efforts were pretty much normal aside from the usual increase around holiday targeted social media campaigns. All of which leads us to the following conclusions:

More people bought VR equipment as Christmas presents in 2017.

Virtual reality was a big winner as this year’s go-to Christmas tech gift.

Popular VR Content for Christmas

It’s also likely no surprise that this massive influx of VR noobies headed straight for the “demo” content. This is a phrase we kick around the WEARVR office that leads right back to the early days of the DK1 and DK2, which were almost entirely populated by experiences that offered a first introduction to the new world of VR.

Roller coasters came out near the top of the list, as did virtual reality video experiences like SONAR and Star Wars: Hunting of the Fallen (The Last Jedi no doubt helped with the latter). What you might call extreme sports titles, such as WingSuit VR and Air Racer VR were snapped up in abundance too, as was Google Earth VR and TheBlu (could that be when mum and dad got a go on the headset?).

But it seems that newcomers weren’t immediately drawn to the AAA high priced action games; instead cutting their VR teeth on the quick and intense experiences like Plank Not Included offer. No doubt they’ll quickly progress to the big hitters like Doom VFR and SUPERHOT VR, but for fast Christmas fun it was the smaller, more contained experiences that drew the crowds.